CAUSES OF DEATH DURING INFANCY 221and will not die, so it simply waits in the First Heaven
until a new opportunity for embodiment offers, and
where it has died in its previous life under the before-
mentioned harrowing circumstances by accident or
upon the battlefield or where the lamentations of
relatives rendered it impossible for it to gain as deep
an impression of evil committed and the good
accomplished as would have been the case had it died
in peace, it is instructed when it has died in the next
life as a child in the effects of passions and desires so
that it learns the lessons then which it should have
learned in the purgatorial life had it remained
undisturbed. It is then reborn with the proper
development of conscience so that it may continue its
evolution.
As in the past man has been exceedingly warlike
and not at all careful of the relatives who passed out at
death because of his ignorance, holding wakes over
those who died in bed, which were few, perhaps,
compared to those who died on the battlefield, there
must necessarily on that account be an enormous
amount of infant mortality, but as humanity arrives at a
better understanding and realizes that we are never so
much our brother’s keeper as when he is passing out of
this life and that we can help him enormously by being
quiet and prayerful, so also will infant mortality cease
to exist on such a large scale as at present.